What is the difference between portable home generators and home standby generators or home backup generators?
The word “portable”.
Nothing about home standby generators or home backup generators implies portability or maneuverability. Those are big and heavy and fixed in place.

A standby home generator is always ready to generate backup power. These are able to keep your power on during an outage by coming on automatically when an outage is detected. It’s installed outside your house and resembles an AC unit in a metal casing. Within seconds of a power outage you can be up and running making your own electricity, whether you’re at home or not, as long as the generator has a supply of gas of some sort (i.e. natural gas, diesel or propane). It’s automatic.
Portable home generators, on the other hand, are usually on wheels and not encased in their own metal cabinet. With wheelbarrow style handles or handles of any kind, you can lift portable home generators on an angle putting most of the weight onto the wheels and drag ’em around. Even portable home generators, other than small quiet portable generators, are too heavy to lift by oneself and carry around. With a bit of leverage and a set of wheels though, you can get them to where you need to make your own power.
What Can You Do With Portable Home Generators?
Let’s say you have options. Many options. The portable home generators we sell give you the ability to hook up different cords for different things. The common outlets are your regular 120v AC outlets, and 30 amp outlets for heavier loads like an RV.
Yes, you can plug your RV, trailer or motorhome into the 30 amp outlet of a generator. Is this giving you some ideas of what you can do with one of these units?
Picture yourself in a storm, and still having your fridge and freezer on. Imagine being out at a lake maybe only with a tent, yet still having lights and a small fridge, or even heat for cold nights.
What if you’re at an outdoor party, like tailgating at football or soccer games? You could be the only one out there with electricity as you make your own with a portable home generator.
Get the picture? They don’t have to be only for home use. However, if your power goes off at home and you have one of these ready to go, then you can run your appliances still. As long as the capacity of the generator is high enough to handle the powering up surge of the appliances combined load.
Job sites: Run power tools off the back of your truck! Even a smaller and more quiet portable generator like an IG3500 will work for this purpose.
Imagine generating electricity at any of myriad possibilities. Emergency and evacuation situations, food trucks, camp sites, cottages, tiny houses, van dwelling (yes, it’s a thing), boondocking, outdoor vendors, living off-grid, fishing, sports, house boats, RV’s, utility trailers, the shed in your back yard. You can make your own power ANYWHERE!
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